Listening To Silence
by darla101
Summary: A 16 yr old Anakin thinks about his life, and his training. Post episode 2. Vignette.


Some people don't like the rain.  
  
Its cold, wet and soaks you to the skin. It can make you very sick, but it can also make you feel alive, washed over with a pulsing life.  
  
When I was very little, my mom told me the rain was the tears of the angels, when they felt sorrowful. Which, I suppose, was often. This galaxy can be a cruel place, full of danger, hurt and pain.  
  
As I look out over Coruscant, all i see is people fleeing from the rain. The coldness they don't want to feel, because they're afraid to feel it on the outside, because they already fell it inside. That's why they run. They think, if I can run a little longer, I'll forget. I won't feel empty inside. But perhaps just something like staying out while it's raining, to feel the beating heart of human life. Of course, not everyone here is human. Even those who wear a humans skin as a mask. But we don't talk of such people. Because, they are ones that we fear. The ones we try to ignore.  
  
Some people are afraid of us. They don't understand, therefore they fear. They think of things like, if they can read our minds, how are our thoughts our own? How can we think, therefore be alive, worth counting as a person, and not a statistic? Can they hurt us, because they can do things we can't? Do we seem inferior? Do we matter? Or are we all just the same?  
  
I'm not sure if I can answer those questions. Perhaps, if I could, people wouldn't be frightened. But the only answer I can give is one to myself. That everyone matters; everyone has a part to play in this universe. The more people doesn't mean that we become a number, worthless of recognition. It means that we are all chords in the symphony of life, a beautiful symphony that sometimes I think only I can hear. I hear that symphony tonight, through the blazing lights of the towns, the people I can see from this windowsill and even those I cannot, are playing their music, and I can even pretend its just for me on some nights.  
  
Their music can be beautiful, hateful and sometimes despairing, but always spectacular. I wonder what sound I make, which chord I am. I've been wondering it my whole life, just trying to fit in. I never could on Tatooine. I just wasn't like them. I tried, I really did. Now I fear history is repeating itself. Sometimes I think I don't belong in this Temple either. That there is something wrong with the part I play in this choir of my illusion. Its that fear, my fear. Perhaps its what Master Yoda seen when he looked ay me, maybe he still sees it. Maybe no one sees it, that's why I feel so a lone, like one of those weeping angels.  
  
I feel cold. I should shut the window, but I don't care.  
  
I wonder if mom is thinking about me. Maybe she knows okay, moms know that kind of thing. And even if most moms didn't, she would. That's just who mom is. I miss her. Does she miss me? I hope she does in a way; it would be nice to be missed. But I don't want her to worry. I want her to be happy. To have her life back. I know, that when I was born, she didn't have much of a life. I took up what little time she had. She said I was her miracle, but maybe I was her curse.  
  
Can I see the Tatooine suns from here? I'll have to ask Master Tiin in my next geography class. I can see Naboo's sun. It beautiful, the brightest star. Kind of like its Queen. Does Padme miss me? I kind of hope so. I miss her, I think about her a lot. Not in the same way as Mom though. I don't feel like Im one of those angels around her, I feel happy, if a little nervous. And now I'm rambling on about nothing. And now I'm talking to myself. Maybe I'm going crazy. Maybe I've been crazy for a long time.  
  
I'm just listening again. To my music, I call it that sometimes. To the rain making its clatter on the rooftops and fleeing people. To the silence, which according to Master Obi-Wan is the best sound of all. Maybe because he can't hear the symphony. He can't hear how it makes you want to have that spring in your step sometimes, how it makes you smile for no reason, and how it makes your eyes feeling like everlasting waterfalls.  
  
Sometimes I think I'm the proverbial one-eyed boy in the kingdom of the blind, but other times, I feel blind to everything, like everyone sees something that I don't. Like the chosen one prophecy. I don't see how I can have this big giant destiny thing, and I'm still failing Biology? Life can be very complicated.  
  
Sometimes life is everything you want it to be. The thing that you get up for in the morning, the thing that brings the sunrise every day and carries it to its sleeping place at night. Sometimes life is the hell you endure, wondering how you'll make it through, just painting that face on that your praying will get you through.  
  
I suppose sometimes dreaming is what gets you through. That hope that something will happen, the impossible occurring in front of your very eyes. Most people don't realize it, but the impossible happens everyday. Life is impossible.  
  
Maybe I'm in no position to say anything. By all accounts, the impossible happened to me. My dream became a reality and I am forced to see the truth in dreams. That dreams are all they are, and that they should stay that way because dreams and reality can never become one and end happily. My dream was to be Jedi. Admirable dream, right? The protectors of the galaxy, and I wanted to be one. Me and thousands of other nine year olds I guess. But the difference is this.  
  
When you see a Jedi, they an untouchable person that you want to be. But what you have to go through, the tedious and sometimes boring training never even crosses your mind. You want the dream, not the reality.  
  
Not that my training was always boring, oh no. I only have to think of my first lesson in levitation and I smile. It's a nice memory. Master Obi-Wan and I, we were out in the gardens. It was early, perhaps seven hundred? We were sitting on the grass, and he was trying to make me lift this little bronze ball and I just couldn't. I was trying so hard and it just wouldn't go. So he tells me not to try so hard. Fine, so I don't. I try to make this totally natural. And what happens? This ball shoots up in the air so far we can't see it anymore! So we're just sitting there, staring up at where this little bronze ball went, and I said, "Uh, whoops?" and we just looked at each other and cracked up. It was just like the funniest thing, and we weren't sure why. So then Master Obi-Wan starts shaking his head, wiping the tears from his eyes and tries to calm down. He turns to me and says, " How far did you send that?" Well I didn't know so I just look up and shrug, so he looks up as well, and then turns to me and says "I don't think its coming back." And goes back in to a laughter fit.  
  
I smiled at the memory. It was so great just to laugh away the tension. And there is tension between us. Why? Could be a number of things. The fact I wasn't wanted at foirst, I felt like a burden. Maybe he was nervous about having me around. I'm not Qui-Gon. I can't ever be either. That's another thing we're had to deal with. And it didn't go well. My minds a jumble. There are so many things that I think about, and not enough time. I suppose everyone thinks that.  
  
"Anakin? Come away from the window, before you get a cold."  
  
I suppose Id better leave.  
  
---  
  
In his room in the Jedi Dorms, Anakin Skywalker closed his window and closed his link to the outside world, in favor of a crossword with his Jedi Master, and the quietness of the Jedi Temple. 


End file.
